Sri Lanka’s emerging digital public infrastructure could open opportunities for the financial technology sector well beyond payment processing, according to Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya, Chief Advisor to the President on the Digital Economy.
Speaking to industry publication Biometric Update, Wijayasuriya said the three platforms now being built out — the Unique Digital Identity (UDI), the National Data Exchange and the National Payment Platform — together create a foundation on which fintech firms can build products tailored to specific needs of citizens and businesses, rather than concentrating on conventional payment services. He named lending, insurance and fraud prevention as areas of potential expansion.
“The integration of biometric-enabled digital ID authentication enables Fintech companies to modernize customer onboarding, while access to secure citizen registries through the National Data Exchange augments credit risk assessment for unbanked populations,” he said. “Additionally, real-time payment systems and digital signatures ease the embedding of financial services into many sectors, including e-commerce and agriculture.”
The remarks frame identity verification and data access as the constraints that have kept formal credit out of reach for borrowers without conventional collateral or banking histories.
Wijayasuriya said recent activity in the local sector includes direct-payment links for social commerce, digital lending platforms and blockchain-based supply-chain applications.
The Ministry of Digital Economy has also launched a DPI Sandbox, a testing environment in which public- and private-sector developers can build applications that connect to the state platforms. More than 20 state institutions and several private-sector providers are taking part, with more than 50 application programming interfaces (APIs) made available to support experimentation and interoperability.
The comments come as the government works through a digital identity rollout it has said should be complete by August 2027, having earlier made its GovPay platform mandatory for traffic fine payments. The National Data Exchange was taken to Cabinet as a dedicated data-sharing centre in May, with officials saying it would rest on a legal framework requiring citizen consent for transfers.
Sri Lanka’s first FinTech Festival is scheduled for November 2-3 at Shangri-La Colombo, organised by the FinTech Forum Sri Lanka with the Digital Economy Ministry.